Spectator

By KURT ANDERSEN

IN THIS KNOWING AGE, WHEN EVERY CITIZEN IS FAMILiar with the seasonal anomalies of box-office grosses and Nielsen overnights, the willingness to believe in old-fashioned show-business fairy tales is low. Today, instead of Lana Turner we have Madonna.

So no wonder NBC's decision to replace David Letterman with a nobody ( provoked such a frenzy. Conan O'Brien, who just turned 30, is the truest show- business Cinderella since -- well, ever. O'Brien isn't merely "little known"; Saturday Night Live's Al Franken, for instance, is a superstar by comparison. Hundreds of people his age have logged more TV time. O'Brien will soon get remedial training (an NBC executive foresees "several weeks" of dry-run shows), but before the summer ends he will have to entertain 3 million people night after night after night.

In the meantime, however, we can revel in the giddy miracle of his ascension. Like a plurality of his fellow young Harvard Lampoon alumni, O'Brien has been pursuing a TV-comedy writing career -- first Saturday Night Live, now The Simpsons -- and so when SNL creator Lorne Michaels agreed to run the post-Letterman Late Night, he asked O'Brien to be his head writer- producer. They and NBC spent weeks failing to agree on a host. Dennis Miller, Dana Carvey and dozens of other comedians, all of them more famous and experienced than O'Brien, were considered and either turned down the job (Carvey) or were rejected (Miller et al.).

Four weeks ago, O'Brien's brand-new agent (he's a year younger than his client) suggested to Michaels that they make Conan the host. For Michaels, it was evidently an epiphany; to NBC, it was madness. But since Michaels is, in NBC's desperate post-Tartikoff era, the only putative in-house genius, his notion was not summarily dismissed. A few days later, O'Brien, with no preparation and no cue cards, hosted his make-believe show on the Tonight show set. "The kid is no pro," says an NBC programmer who watched the test, but immediately the network took him more seriously, and, unbeknown to Bob Costas, even offered him the 1:35 a.m. slot now occupied by Costas' talk show Later.

The day before the screen test, NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield, groping for an alternative to Late Night with Conan O'Brien, had called comedian Garry Shandling's manager (who also represents Miller, Carvey and -- this is the dicey, potential-conflict-of- interest part -- Michaels) to broach the Late Night job. According to Shandling's people, NBC was willing to pay him $5 million a year. Last Monday morning, however, Shandling, having dithered for two weeks, turned down the job, and before lunch O'Brien's agent got NBC's phone call: $1 million plus, a one-year contract, take it or leave it -- and by the way, Conan will be taping a guest shot on Leno in six hours.

It was the romantic, thrilling choice. Was it the right one? Probably. Michaels would certainly have declined to produce Shandling, and the show would have been a long shot anyway. Late Night with Some Vaguely Familiar Lesser Comedian probably would have tanked too, and more embarrassingly. O'Brien's version may also fail, but as long as nothing but long shots were available, why not go for the longest? O'Brien is cheap to employ and, if need be, to fire. The audience expectations will be helpfully low.

O'Brien's problem is not his lack of fame -- Letterman wasn't well known when Late Night started -- but his inexperience: Can any amateur convincingly manage the complexities of generating laughter, conveying onscreen authority, interviewing guests? Despite Littlefield's declaration that "the accent will be on comedy more than on interviews," no one has figured out how to do that: hour for hour, Late Night's budget is a tenth of SNL's. The most recent attempt to ignore those cruel economics was The Wilton North Report, a disastrous late-night comedy-and-talk show on Fox, which had among its staff of very smart writers the young -- that is, even younger -- Conan O'Brien.

O'Brien could wind up as a Trivial Pursuit question, but Michaels, at whose insistence NBC made this admirably nutty, roll-the-dice decision, cannot really lose. Already his power is enhanced. A source close to Michaels says he will demand for himself some of the millions NBC is saving on the host's salary. If the kid doesn't work out, his failure will be generally regarded as noble and inevitable, not really Michaels' fault. On the other hand, if the show succeeds and O'Brien seems about to become the fin-de-siecle Ernie Kovacs, his producer's megagenius will be indisputable. Which might prove useful a year from now, when Michaels' NBC contract is up for renewal.